Wednesday, May 1, 2013

LETTER FROM NYC: RAP PAYBACK, columnMelody Maker, February 15th 1992

by Simon Reynolds

When Apocalypse ‘91 came
out, it felt like Public Enemy were in a rut. Sure, they still gave
good interview, but the music was breaking no new ground and even the
rap/metal link-up with Anthrax seemed old hat. But, over here, Public
Enemy have managed to put themselves back on the cutting edge. Releasing
their new single, “By the Time I Get to Arizona” (by far the best track
on the LP, with its superbad-ass stink-funk riff) in time for Martin
Luther King Day on January 20, PE have ignited a national furore.

See,
Arizona is the only state that doesn’t recognize King’s birthday. And
PE’s video is a “revenge fantasy” in which Security of The First World
paramilitaries assassinate a local senator with a poisoned candygram and
detonate a bomb under the state governor’s car. These inflammatory
scenes are juxtaposed with re-enactments of King’s assassination and the
civil rights struggles of the Sixties (blacks being splattered with
food for sitting in whites-only diners or being expelled from apartheid
buses). The ensuing controversy has put PE on the TV news and the front
covers of America’s most mainstream papers.

On one
hand, you sympathise with the outrage that prompted Chuck D to dub
Arizona a “devil’s haven”--in 1990, the Arizona electorate rejected two
proposals to re-establish a paid King holiday. Can you blame Chuck D for
interpreting this to mean that most Arizonans would like to roll back
the civil rights gains of the Sixties and return to Fifties-style
segregation? At the same time, the video jars with Martin Luther King’s
creed on non-violent protest and has been duly censured by civil rights
activists and King’s family as a disgrace to his memory. Public Enemy’s
riposte to that is, “while Dr King may have stood for non-violence, we
wonder what he would have stood for after that bullet ripped violently
through his neck. Being assassinated will often change your political
viewpoint." Ho hum.

So is the video a valid symbolic
expression of black rage, a publicity stunt for a group suffering the
mid-career stagnation blues or a naked incitement to political violence?
In a call-in poll, over 60% of MTV viewers supported the promo as
legitimate protest and rejected the notion that it could encourage
violence. But Public Enemy themselves have never said the video should
not be taken literally; Chuck D’s declared belief in “a tooth for a
tooth, a head for a head” suggests the opposite.

Where
do us white liberals stand? Probably, like me, all over the place. On
one hand, you empathise with the rage, especially considering the
backdrop of escalating bias attacks (two black children just got sprayed
with white paint) or the bid by the “former” neo-Nazi David Duke for
the governership of Louisiana. At the same time, you feel perturbed by
reports of paranoia in the PE camp: Chuck D (who’s been described as a
man who’s never met a conspiracy theory he didn’t like) apparently
believes that AIDS, Muhammed Ali’s speech problem and Richard Pryor’s
multiple sclerosis are all part of a government anti-Black plot, while
Sister Souljah’s new record imagines a President David Duke reinstating
slavery--in 1995!

But wherever you stand or falter,
there’s one thing you have to admit with more than a trace of awe. Four
albums in, Public Enemy still do what no rock band today can seemingly
pull off: not just comment on, but connect with, real issues, real
stakes in the outside world; aggravate the contradictions, make the
wounds rawer and harder to ignore. Compared with that, the petty
debates and dissensions of “alternative music” seem awful puny....